Alienated America

[*Wyche'sWarrior*]

(03-06-2019, 08:40 AM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: You're right that I don't know anything about the coal fields of Appalachia.

I'm not sure how the Scots-Irish prejudice relates to my post though.

People were shot over wanting safe working conditions and decent pay during the strikes, all the way into the 1970s.  There's a lot more to the story than that, and it's actually very interesting if you're into history. Forced to live in company housing and buy from the company stores, most miners wound up essentially working for room and board, and little else, and the companies got all of that money too. I don't want to seem to be diminishing what happened before the Emancipation Proclamation, but this was essentially legalized slavery in a sense.  Not to mention that the native landowners were ignorant to the value of their land when the coal barons showed up and ripped them off for their mineral rights. It's akin to the European settlers buying native lands for beads. 

Once the industrialists to the north got what they wanted out of the ground, they've abandoned these communities and left them with little from the boom days but debt, pollution, and dwindling opportunity. These people fueled the Industrial Revolution and the WWII war machine, and have largely been left to wallow in poverty and ridicule.

I just threw the Scots-Irish in because you mentioned white folks hadn't seen any oppression or the like. For some odd reason, there was a lot of prejudice and hate towards that group.